Daniel P. Diaz

“I would say that in people’s general consciousness today, there are three dominant values that are presented in a mythical one-sidedness that puts moral reason at risk. These three are progress, science, and freedom.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Values in a Time of Upheaval: Meeting the Challenges of the Future

“The essential character of these two positions can be seen very clearly in the trial of Jesus, when Pilate asks the Savior: “What is truth?” (John 18:38). One very prominent representative of the strictly relativistic position, the Austrian professor of jurisprudence Hans Kelsen, who later emigrated to America, has published a meditation on this biblical text in which he sets out his view with unmistakable clarity.3 We shall return below to Kelsen’s political philosophy; let us first see how he expounds the biblical text. Kelsen sees Pilate’s question as an expression of the skepticism that a politician must possess. In this sense, the question is already an answer: truth is unattainable. And we see that this is indeed how Pilate thinks from the fact that he does not even wait for an answer from Jesus but turns immediately to address the crowd. He leaves it to the people to decide the disputed question by means of their vote. Kelsen holds that Pilate acts here as a perfect democrat: since he himself does not know what is just, he leaves it to the majority to decide. In this way, the Austrian scholar portrays Pilate as the emblematic figure of a relativistic and skeptical democracy that is based not on values and truth but on correct procedures.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Values in a Time of Upheaval: Meeting the Challenges of the Future

“The state is not itself the source of truth and morality. It cannot produce truth from its own self by means of an ideology based on people or race or class or some other entity. Nor can it produce truth via the majority. The state is not absolute.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Values in a Time of Upheaval: Meeting the Challenges of the Future

“The use of power to regulate and serve the law is the opposite pole of a power that knows no law or that flouts the law—and that is a power we call “violence.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Values in a Time of Upheaval: Meeting the Challenges of the Future